MacBook Air, MacBook Pro 2016 To Arrive In October?
Analysts revealed that the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro 2016 will most probably be released in the market this coming October.
Speaking with Forbes, IHS Securities analyst Rhoda Alexander revealed that there is a high possibility that new MacBook laptops will be out in the market — or at least, unveiled by Apple — either by late September or in October.
According to Alexander, both the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro have entered production during the second quarter of the year which means it will be ready for release by the end of the third quarter to the beginning of the last quarter of 2016.
“Production started in the second calendar quarter on refreshes of the 13.3-inch and 15.4-inch MacBook Pro [and] the 13.3-inch MacBook Air.”
Since there is very little time left for September, Forbes is speculating that the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro will be slated for release in October.
Tech Times noted that the prediction is possible considering that Apple is currently on a roll with the successful release and retail of the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.
However, the outlet also noted that while some may be happy that new MacBook laptops are coming, there are still a couple of major drawbacks in the matter.
Since the IHS projection claims that production of the Apple laptops have already begun, there is a good chance that the device will not have the highly anticipated Intel Kaby Lake under the hood.
Alexander echoes this idea, saying that “given the timing of the start of production, inclusion of [Intel’s] Kaby Lake chip appears unlikely.”
Of course, some may continue to hope that the new Intel chip will still make it to the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro though the IHS analyst believes otherwise.
In August, Intel unveiled its Kaby Lake processor which Anand Tech pegged to be a chip for better graphics performance while the Skylake processor which would most likely power the upcoming MacBook laptops is still undergoing several modifications.
Intel’s 7th generation of Core CPUs are coming later this year https://t.co/q42Ncnv3nk pic.twitter.com/2sKuRIOv8U
— Engadget (@engadget) May 31, 2016
Channel Pro compared the two and confirmed that the Kaby Lake chips are indeed better in terms of a “more optimized design.”
However, analyst Daniel Matte told Forbes that there is also the possibility that Apple would be adding an option for MacBook Air and MacBook Pro users to opt for AMD’s latest “Polaris” graphics processors.
Aside from that, Tech Times revealed that the MacBook Air is rumored to have an additional feature called the Pencil Trackpad based on a patent titled “Stylus with inertial sensor” that Apple filed back in November last year.
Based on the description of the feature, Apple intends to add a stylus compatibility feature to the MacBook Air that could function in a lot of ways as described below.
“Inertial sensor input may be gathered when operating the stylus in one or more inertial sensor input modes such as an air mouse mode, a rotational controller mode, a joystick mode, and/or other inertial sensor input modes.”
In terms of size, the MacBook Air is slated to be a 15-inch laptop instead of the previously rumored 11-inch one which basically indicates Apple’s plan to make this particular line of laptops be bigger in the future.
Additional features include a USB Type-C port, more RAM, enhanced batteries and cooling components, and a thinner design.
Meanwhile, there is still a great chance that Apple is not giving up on the MacBook Pro 2016 though everything should still be taken with a grain of salt considering that there has been no official announcement on the matter yet.
[Featured Image by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images]
